9/6/2019

A: Ages upon ages, people have tried to think of examples of what it is like to be in heaven by using experiences we have on earth. If I may, a good way to describe heaven is to think about the best day of your life, multiply it times a billion million, and you still are not even close!
Perhaps the last sentence was a poor description for many, but how do you describe eternal life with God through experiences in this life? The best way would be through the experience of the beatific vision, also known as to see God as he is in this life. Heaven is precisely communion of life and love with God, the Holy Trinity, and all the blessed in heaven. Our deepest longing as human beings is to be with God for all eternity. What do people do in heaven? They have eternal life with God. Nothing in this world can beat that.

Q: Why do we get baptized?

Lanie GardnerSt. Clairsville

A: The short answer: to unite us with Jesus Christ. You see, we are united with Jesus in baptism, for he died for our sins and rose from the dead for our justification. That being said, the sacrament of baptism becomes the first sacrament of forgiveness of sins because of our being united with Christ.
Baptism destroys original sin, that sin committed by our first parents, Adam and Eve, that prevented us from going to heaven and being united with God. Baptism opens “the door,” as the Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs, for all the other sacraments. Graces received in baptism restore you and me to what the human race was intended to be at the very beginning of our creation. In baptism, you and I are “born again,” for we are recreated as sons and daughters of God the Father through the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, his son.
To put it in somewhat of a secular language, in baptism you and I finally possess the potential to be whom God intended us to be. In baptism, God himself – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – elevates us to a higher level as his beloved children.

Q: Why tell your sins to a priest? Can a man forgive sins?

Alexis HoodMartins Ferry

A: I will answer the second question first for Jesus Christ is the man who forgives sins and the priest in the sacrament of penance represents Jesus Christ in the confessional.
As for the first question, Jesus gave the first bishops the authority to forgive sins through the sacrament of penance or confession that he himself instituted (see, John, Chapter 20, Verses 21-23). Furthermore, this gift of forgiveness of sins is handed on through presbyteral ordination, as the bishop ordains a man a priest. This becomes that man’s competency, to forgive sins in Jesus’ name; namely, to not simply remove these sins that burden the soul of a penitent, but to replace those sins with God’s enduring grace. One way to understand this is that through God’s grace the penitent is equipped with the ability to avoid sin the next time, and to have his or her communion with God strengthened through the supernatural gifts that come from the sacrament of penance.
No human beings possess the ability to arbitrarily forgive sins as they see fit. There is nothing accidental about it. Jesus intentionally bestowed the gift of the sacrament of penance upon his church in order that you and I may be reunified with God and that our love for him may be strengthened without the corruption and burden of sin.

May you and your family be showered with God’s blessings as we celebrate the final weeks of this summertime season, a gift from God himself.